Writing for Magazines

Writing for a magazine can be a difficult transition from writing for a newspaper. At least that's how it was for me.

The first time I wrote anything magazine style was actually for a class I took to earn my Professional Writing minor. I remember being a little smug. Since I had spent the last couple years working for a daily newspaper, I figured magazine writing would be easy. But, much to my surprise, my very first draft of my very first magazine-style article came back with so many red marks that I could hardly read what I had typed. And that's how the whole quarter went.

My teacher's goal for the class was for us to realize how hard it is to be a professional writer, and to give us a taste of the cold, hard, inevitable world of rejection. And he was successful. Every day I would leave class feeling like a complete failure. But on the bright side, I now can handle criticism and rejection much better than before.

I learned a lot from him, and from interning at a local magazine for a while. So here are some of the tips I have picked up to write magazine articles that sell.

Try to send a query letter to the magazine before you write your article. Many magazines get too many unsolicited manuscripts to count, and oftentimes they just throw them away.

Make sure you know what topics the magazine you are querying publishes. If you are considering writing an article for them, it has to fit in with their magazine style. This means don't write a parenting article for a fashion magazine. Instead, try to find a fresh topic the magazine hasn't covered yet, and sell it to them ahead of time.

Use descriptive language and make sure to show not tell. Magazines have more fluff than newspapers, and descriptive language makes you article more interesting. Also, you have more space and a longer word count, so you may as well write something worth reading.

Keep in mind there are elements of journalism. All your quotes need to be accurate, all names need to be spelled correctly, and all facts should be checked. I think magazines are more stringent than newspapers about fact checking-at least in my experience. When I worked for a magazine, I had to call people and read them their quotes and ask them if that is what they said. I also had to look up nearly every phrase in the article to make sure it was accurate-this included double checking the name of the exact shade of a recommended red lipstick in a blurb.

And remember, not all your ideas are going to be accepted for submission, but keep trying anyway! Just because one article is not accepted does not mean all your other articles will be rejected.